Habakkuk 1:1-3; 2:1-4 * July 1, 2007
* Pentecost 5 *
Pastor Leyrer
Dear Friends in Christ,
Today we will step outside the practice of preaching on one of our three Scripture readings to spend time with a Bible author who is not exactly a household name. It’s fair to say he did not make the list of Old Testament names parents often give to their sons. It’s quite likely that you know a Jacob or a Benjamin or a Nathan or an Aaron or a David. It’s rare to run into a Habakkuk.
Although his name may be unusual, the struggles and questions of faith he presents are not. In fact, they are struggles and questions that believers have grappled with for centuries. And it is very possible – better, probable – that in one way or another every single one of us has dealt with the issues Habakkuk brings to the table today. In that sense, this ancient and oddly named prophet is an amazingly contemporary man.
The good news is that our text provides us not just with questions, but also with answers. And that’s a pretty good way to summarize the message we have before us. This morning we have the opportunity to spend time with a text that supplies us with both
MAN’S QUESTIONS AND GOD’S ANSWERS
“The oracle that
Habakkuk the prophet received…” An “oracle” was a message from God, often
if the form of a vision or a dream. God
chose to give such a message to Habakkuk and for the sake of our spiritual
benefit preserved it.
We know very little about this man, other than that he was a “prophet.” If we think of a prophet as a person God used exclusively to foretell future events, we’d be mostly wrong. At times that was the case, but for the most part a prophet was simply a messenger God used to proclaim His Word to a certain people at a certain time. Habakkuk was just one of many such spokesmen found within the pages of Scripture. His book is listed at the end of the Old Testament in that section we refer to as “the Minor Prophets.”
However, unlike many of the other Minor Prophets, Habakkuk’s book is not so much a warning to God’s people at a particular time, but a dialogue between God and the prophet. It was composed to strengthen and encourage true believers at a time when most of their countrymen were defecting from the Lord.
As the opening words will indicate, the majority of the people Habakkuk dealt with were, well, ungodly. While professing faith, their religious practice was little more than empty ritualism. A thin veneer of respectability covered hearts that were spiritually bankrupt.
This state of affairs did not escape Habakkuk. So he begins the dialogue by asking God some very pointed questions about this: “How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.”
These words don’t need much explanation. The prophet looked at the world around him
and saw violence and wrong doing and injustice and strife and conflict – and all of this happening not only to, but
by and among those who called themselves God’s children!
So he asks two simple questions of God. Number one: how long is this going to go on? Number two: Why are these things happening in the first place?
Implied within these two questions, of course, are several others. Such as: Have you forgotten Your people, Lord? Are you unable/unwilling/powerless to do anything about this, Lord? Do you even hear me in the first place, Lord? Can you explain to me why the righteous suffer and the wicked flourish, Lord? Can you help me come to grips with the inconsistency of why such a good God permits such bad things to happen, Lord?
Do these questions sound familiar? They do because they are ageless. Habakkuk was certainly neither the first nor the last to ask them. And if we are honest, they are questions we wonder about ourselves. For instance…
We read about senseless acts of violence and we may wonder: How long, O Lord, is this kind of stuff going to go on?
We watch a loved one go through an extended illness with little or no hope for recovery but just a gradual loss of strength and vitality, and we may wonder: How long, O Lord?
We experience pain or loss or setbacks or difficulties, or we lose an opportunity to do something we feel would really be beneficial, and we may wonder: Why is this happening? Why me? Why my kids? Why my parents?
We find ourselves essentially being penalized for doing the right thing or something happens that shatters our concept that it’s a just world if you simply play by the rules, and we may wonder: Where is the fairness, O Lord?
We read about a drunken driver plowing into the side of a car or a bus killing little children, or job related accidents which leave widows and fatherless children in their wake; we continue to be mystified by man’s general inhumanity to man, and we may wonder: Why are you letting this happen, O Lord?
No, Habakkuk wasn’t the only one asking these questions as he looked around and saw what he perceived to be unvarnished acts of injustice and unfairness. These are contemporary questions; questions we may find ourselves asking. We may preface them with statements such as, “I know I shouldn’t be questioning God” or “I probably shouldn’t be thinking this way…” but then we ask them anyway.
Back to our text. It picks up in chapter 2. After the prophet issued a second grievance along the same lines, we read: “I will stand at my watch and station myself on ramparts; I will look to see what He will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.” The context would indicate that Habakkuk was not just whining. He was truly searching for some answers. So he plans to wait for God to provide them. And God, in His grace, condescends to answer his troubled prophet.
“Then the Lord replied: ‘Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and not delay.’” Habakkuk was instructed to write down what God was about to tell him so others like us could know. And even though it may take a little while, Habakkuk was assured that answers would indeed be given and appropriate action taken.
The message which followed was originally directed to the
specific time that Habakkuk lived. It
had to do with the fall of
Let’s backtrack for a moment. Habakkuk’s first complaint was: Why do You tolerate so much evil and
wickedness from Your people? God’s answer: My people will shortly be disciplined by the
hand of
And then the Lord begins His pronouncement against
On the other hand, “THE
RIGHTEOUS WILL LIVE BY HIS FAITH.”
And that’s the answer to the prophet’s questions. Here is the explanation Habakkuk was looking
for. Wickedness may abound and
unrighteous people may live by violence and injustice – but the RIGHTEOUS (the believer) WILL LIVE BY
HIS FAITH!
So what does it mean to “live by faith?” “Live” must be understood in two ways. First it means to live eternally through faith in what was at Habakkuk’s time the promised Savior and in our time the Savior who has come – Jesus Christ.
In the New Testament book of Romans the Apostle Paul uses this passage to explain the central message of Scripture, which is JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. We live eternally through faith – that is, laying hold of and applying to ourselves the perfect life and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ as our substitute, all of which was proven to be acceptable to God through His glorious resurrection.
Because of what Jesus did and through our trust and belief in Him as our Savior, we will not receive the damnation that our sins before a holy God deserve. We are justified – forgiven – through faith. Which means our place in heaven is secure because it does not depend upon what we do for God, but on believing what God has done for us in Jesus.
But there is more. In addition to eternal life by faith, believers also live in this life by faith. Even though evil and bad and seemingly senseless tragic events take place we live by faith! Faith in what? Faith in God’s love and goodness to His children; faith in all of His promises to us…
Promises such as Romans 8:28: “In all things God works for the good of
those who love Him,” or Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare His only Son, but gave
him up for us all, how will he not also, along with Him, graciously give us all
things?” Promises from God of
His presence in our lives like this one from the book of Hebrews: “Never will I leave you, never will I
forsake you,” or this promise from the risen Christ: “Surely I am with you always to the very end
of the age.”
Here is the answer to those nagging questions of how long
and why – FAITH! And not just blind
faith. Faith in God’s love which is demonstrated and proven in the
cross of Jesus Christ!
Which means even though there may be things which God allows or which come from His hand that we don’t understand (and which, by the way, we have no right to question because God is God nothing less and man is man nothing more), far more important than focusing on what we don’t understand is focusing on what we do. And that is the cross of Jesus Christ.
In the cross of Jesus
Christ and all the love and promises from God that surround it we find as much of
an answer as we need to the “why’s” and “wherefore’s” of life.
That is the conclusion Habakkuk came to as well. The last verses of his book are no longer the words of a questioning man, but a man of faith; a man who grew from searching for answers from God about life’s troubles to a man who trusted God even in the midst of those troubles. We’ll conclude this morning by listening to his final words:
“Though the fig tree
does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no
cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in my
Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my
strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to go on the
heights.”
As He did for Habakkuk, may God give us strength to endure. May He give us the wisdom to focus on Him, rather than the troubles of this world. May He give us the ability to keep our eyes centered on the cross. And may we, who have been declared eternally righteous through faith, live unquestioningly now by our faith. Amen.